A Star is Born (1976)

 

Famous but self-destructive rock star John Norman Howard bails early on a concert and heads off to a bar to get even more drunk than he already is.

There, he meets the talented younger singer Esther Hoffman.  John immediately recognises her potential to be a star.  There's also an instant attraction between the two, though the romance is not exactly a smooth one: John's frequently selfish and inebriated behaviour sees to that.

Nonetheless, the passion burns through the problems.  They marry, and Esther proves every bit the star John believed her to be.  In fact, her career quickly rockets her toward fame and fortune that eclipses John's own.

While his faith in Esther has been vindicated, John struggles with the decline of his own career.  The fact that this is in large part a result of his own  behaviour is not lost on him, and if anything makes the decline harder to bear.

Is Esther's love enough to sustain John, or will his self-destructive tendencies spiral out of control?

I very much enjoyed the 2018 version of A Star Is Born.  While I enjoyed this version too, it was definitely not to the same extent.  A big factor in this was the music.  While Barbra Streisand is a great singer, the songs simply aren't up to the same standard.  There's nothing here that is anywhere near as memorable as 'Shallow'.  To my mind, in a film so heavily focused on the music industry, this lack is a major weakness. 

John Norman Howard is also a much less likeable character than the more recent film's Jackson Maine.  His behaviour is more obviously and directly harmful to those around him, not just to himself.  Also, these actions seem to be driven more by anger and resentment, rather than weakness.  I can understand why someone would fall in love with Jackson Maine, despite his obvious problems; I have a harder time understanding Esther's fierce commitment to John in the face of his poor treatment of her.

Now obviously there are plenty of people who fall in love with toxic partners in the real world; but fiction generally has a higher 'believability' bar to clear than real life.  I didn't feel that this script ever quite cleared that bar.  Esther's "love" felt more like infatuation with John's stardom and gratitude for the help he gave her in her own career.

 

The basic plotline remains a compelling one, however; there's a reason Hollywood has made four different versions of this film; and the cast are all good.  If you simply can't get enough of A Star Is Born formula, but have already watched the 2018 one a dozen times, this one is worth a look.

This Way Up, Season 1 (2019)

 

Áine (it's pronounced more or less like "Anya") is a young, single Irish woman living in London.  She recently suffered a nervous breakdown and is slowly putting her life back together after spending several weeks at a rehab centre.

Supported by her sister and best friend, Shona, who also lives in London, Áine slowly begins to put her life back together.  She resumes her job teaching English as a second language, tries - with decidedly mixed success - to get over her jerk of an ex-boyfriend, and covers up the many anxieties she still feels with flippant humour and good cheer.  It remains to be seen whether time, Shona's unwavering support, and the prospect of a new romance might finally bring Áine the happiness she so resolutely presents to the world.

This Way Up is a smartly written, well performed comedy drama starring Irish comedian Aisling Bea (roughly pronounced 'Ashlyn Bee').  It does get off to a slightly slow start: the first episode is a little sombre.  But this is necessary groundwork to contextualise the show's stories and characters, and it's worth trying at least a couple more episodes after that to get a feel for the 'real' show.  They're only about 25 minutes each, so that shouldn't present much difficulty.

One aspect of the show that I appreciated is that it shows that bubbly, extroverted, chatty people can still be depressed, or suffering mental health problems.  The face we show the world and how we feel inside ourselves can be very different things.  The fact that Áine presents in such a quirky, humorous way also allows for plenty of snappy wordplay and other jokes.  Her off-beat lesson plans for her English class are particularly fun.

I think however that the real strength of This Way Up, though, is in its depictions of relationships.  Not just romantic ones - though those are certainly a factor - but also platonic friendships and platonic bonds.  The slow thawing between Áine and her client Richard (whose French-speaking son she tutors in English) is done very well, for instance.  And the depiction of Áine and Shona's sisterly bond is excellent.

Good stuff!

Paddington (2014)

 

In the deep jungles of Peru live a species of bear who are highly intelligent and love marmalade.  Their only contact with the human world came forty years ago, when a genial British explorer stumbled across them.

After an earthquake destroys the home of one such family of bears, the youngest member is sent to London to make a new life for himself.

There, he meets the Brown family.  Mrs Brown - much to the chagrin of Mr Brown, a highly risk averse individual - not only gives the young bear a human name (Paddington, obviously) but also offers to let him stay with them for the night.  The next morning, the plan is to try and track down the explorer who previously met the bears.  Perhaps he can provide Paddington with a more permanent home.

But forty years have gone by, and the world has changed. Paddington's search may bring him to the attention of people with sinister intentions.  Can a well-intentioned but rather naïve young bear really find a home in the big, modern city?

Paddington is a fun, super cute family film.  It has a cheerful sense of humour and nails a number of good laughs in its breezy 90 minutes or so of runtime.  It leavens these humorous (mis)adventures with a few more sad and poignant elements, as well, but generally manages to find some wry chuckles even in the more sombre moments.

The script isn't just funny, it is also smart.  In particular, it does a great job of introducing concepts - such as Paddington's difficulties operating modern appliances such as vacuum cleaners - that initially seem to just be humorous filler, but which actually have significant pay-off in the plot.  It's a very tidy piece of work indeed, and I really enjoyed seeing those "throwaway gags" turning out to be anything but throwaway.

The film also profits a lot from its fine cast.  Paddington's voice actor is spot on, and the Brown family are all very engaging, while Peter Capaldi and Nicole Kidman both seem to be having a ball in their more adversarial roles.

Paddington is fine family entertainment.  Recommended.

Vida, Season 2 (2019)

 

At the end of season one of Vida, formerly estranged sisters Lynn and Emma agreed to try and make a going concern of their mother's aging bar.  This isn't going to be easy, however.  The two women are very different people, with different outlooks, values, and ideas for the business.  And the fragility of their newly-repaired relationship is certainly not the only threat to their success.  Less-than-ethical local developer Nelson Herrera still has his eyes on the property, and though they spent their childhoods in the neighbourhood, both women have been away from it for many years.  The locals see them as outsiders who intend to 'gentrify' the bar and in doing so, destroy its cultural significance within the community.

This is the longest season of Vida, with 10 episodes rather than 6, and it's quite the ride.  Emma and Lynn's relationship with each other, as well as  those with their sexual partners and romantic interests (which are definitely not identical groups) are turbulent and difficult.  Their efforts to get the bar back on financial track are just as fraught.  

But for all the ways that these two sisters are completely different, they do both share a fierce commitment to the bar and (despite the many clashes they have) to each other.  If they can get on the same page, they just might be able to make this thing work.  That's a very big "if", though!

I very much enjoyed this season of Vida, just as I did the first.  The writing remains strong, the cast is excellent, and despite both Emma and Lynn having a number of significant character flaws, it is easy to get caught up in their struggle and root for their success.

As with season one, though, if strong coarse language or sex scenes are an issue for you, then be aware that this show has a significant amount of both.  It all serves a story purpose, but Vida is definitely much more open and honest about sex than most TV.

The Colony (1998)

 

As prelude to a full-blown invasion of the Earth, a group of four aliens transplant their minds into human-like android bodies and infiltrate our society.  Their mission is to determine if humanity would make suitable slaves.  If not, the incoming armada will annihilate us.

The problem the aliens face is that some humans seem to make malleable slaves, and some don't.  The quartet wrangle over what this means, with some being happy to just have us annihilated, and others wanting to study us further to see if they can determine a means of enslaving us all.  The latter case wins out and they kidnap a group of humans for experimentation.

Of course, these human captives are not exactly pleased with this development.  They look for a way to escape, only to learn that they can't just save themselves: they also need to find a way to protect the whole planet.

Also known as The Advanced Guard, this is a made-for-basic-cable TV movie.  The effects and sets are every bit as cheap as you'd expect of such a project, but just as great sets and effects do not necessarily a good movie make, so the inverse can be true: a film can look bad but still be great entertainment.

That's not in the case with this film, though.  It's pretty much exactly the kind of film it looks like, and is a pretty lazy and cynical effort all round.

This film contains some of the most cynical nudity I've encountered in a film.  Every so often there's a (deliberately) poorly focused scene of a topless woman undulating her admittedly impressive body. These scenes have nothing to do with the rest of the movie and literally don't intersect with the plot or the film's events in any way.  As noted, the film was originally made for basic cable so I assume this a case of them being able to release an "uncut" version for the home video market.  This kind of thing used to happen a bit back in the late 90s.  In fact, the nude woman in this film went on to have a starring role in a TV show which used a similar gimmick for its pilot episode the very next year - The Lost World.  Though at least that show made some effort to integrate the nude scene as a part of the episode's actual events.

There is one potentially interesting feature to the film, but it squanders it.  That feature is the amount of focus given to the invading aliens as primary characters, rather than the humans they kidnap for study, especially in the film's first act.  These invaders are largely just working joes who primarily care about ticking off the performance targets their bosses have set for them, rather than would-be despots and conquerors.  I think this actually has the potential to be an interesting angle for a film to explore.  This is not going to be that film, though, as it doesn't use this feature to do anything other than engineer a situation of there being one "good" alien and three "bad" ones.

The creation of the "good" alien also leads to the script indulging in some pretty horrible treatment of the female human captive.  She is killed off screen and her body hijacked by the "good" alien, with an off-hand "It's both of us now, really" to try and disguise how gross that basically is.  Also, the fact that the alien can even do this is at odds with the rest of the script: the human-looking bodies that they occupied before this are explicitly artificial, not human at all, and "we struggle to affect human minds" has been a central factor of the plot.

You can safely skip this.

Hitmen, Season 1 (2021)

 

Fran and Jamie have been best friends since high school.  They've stuck together through thick and thin, and even today, three decades since they first met, they always have each other's backs.  Which is a very good thing, for two reasons.

The first is that Fran and Jamie are not exactly the most socially adept of people, and they each pretty much have no-one else in their lives with whom they can openly and honestly discuss the various problems and shortcomings of their lives.  They are each other's safe space to say and feel anything.

The second is that they kill people for a living, which is rather a dangerous gig at times, so they are also each other's safe space to keep breathing.

It's Bake Off Breaking Bad as Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, former hosts of the Great British Bake Off, play Jamie and Fran respectively, and bring their usual daffy, dorky brand of humour to the scenario.  They just happen to be daffy and dorky while also being deadly(-ish).

The sometimes bumbling Jamie and Fran are very Mel and Sue roles; slightly neurotic, often impractical types, with a near-pathological avoidance of any kind of conflict.  Well, any kind of conflict that isn't "I'm sorry, but we have to kill you now, it's our job".  

And it's worth being clear that despite their general nebbish-ness, Fran and Jamie are not in any way reluctant assassins.  They kill without any sign of qualms or compunctions, including bystanders on a couple of occasions.

The episodes of this first season of Hitmen are a bit overly reliant on the same basic structure; most are essentially three-person stories involving Fran, Jamie and their target.  This person is generally already in their custody at the start of the episode, but in each case there is some reason they don't immediately carry out the hit.  To be fair, there is at least some variety in the specifics of why the delay, and how the various potential victims respond to their situation, and the individual scenarios are quite amusing.  Watching them back to back does highlight their similar structures, though. 

The final episode of the season is the one that varies most from this basic pattern, which is definitely a factor in why it is also one of the strongest offerings of the set.  It also sets up a bit of change in the status quo and gives the show new options for season two, which has already aired (and will be the subject of a future review).

A Simple Favor (2018)

 

Widowed single mom Stephanie runs a small scale vlog focusing on parenting tips, crafts and recipes.  She's chronically perky and wholesome, a super-mom whose domestic focus and over-active involvement in school activities leads to a lot of snide comments from the other parents at her son's school.

It's thus a case of 'opposites attract' when Stephanie becomes chums with the swaggering, martini-swilling, decidedly non-domestic Emily Nelson.  Emily's son attends school with Stephanie's kid, and the two mom's bond over after-school playdates and more than a few stuff drinks.  They share secrets; Emily her frustration over her husband's lack of success, Stephanie a past sexual indiscretion quite at odds with her 'nice girl' persona.

Despite their many differences, and Emily's sometimes aggressive demeanour, Stephanie soon counts the other woman as her closest friend.  So she is deeply worried when, after dropping off her son 'for a few hours', Emily does not return.  After 48 hours with no word, she persuades Emily's husband to contact the police.

What has happened to Emily?  Stephanie intends to find out.  People may discount her as a lightweight stay at home mom, but she's determined to not going to give up on her friend.

That determination might prove a lot more dangerous than Stephanie expects ... can she get the answers she wants before the questions get her into something she can't get out of?

A Simple Favor is a fun black comedy that profits immensely from excellent performances at its core.  Both Anna Kendrick (as Stephanie) and Blake Lively (as Emily) do a great job throughout the film, whether performing together and separately.

This film is something of a modern take on the noir tale; we have the femme fatale, the flawed but persistent investigator, the unwise love affair, the innocent dupe ... and of course murder and betrayal.  These ingredients  have however been re-imagined and re-combined in ways that the screenwriters of the 40s would definitely never have considered, which helps keep the whole thing feeling fresh.

The twisty-windy plot that unfolds is perhaps ultimately rather far-fetched and improbable, which might present an issue for some viewers, but I found that it rattled along with enough verve that I didn't really mind.  Anna Kendrick deserves a lot of the credit for this, I think, as she does a great job of showing us the any facets of the more-complex-than-she-appears 'good girl' Stephanie, and depicting her character's slow evolution from would-be wallflower to determined amateur sleuth.

This is a fun romp. Recommended!

One final note: thumbs up for the script's overt messaging about just how much work is involved in being a stay-at-home parent, and the criticism of society's tendency to underestimate its value.

Home Economics,. Season 1 (2021)

 

Tom Hayworth is a critically acclaimed novelist.  Critical acclaim doesn't always mean rampant financial success, however, and together with his wife and three young kids, Tom is just barely clinging to middle class status.  A struggle that is complicated by the fact that having three young kids makes it hard to find time to write.

Now as it happens, Tom could always swallow his pride and go to his younger brother Connor, for a loan.  The genial oaf of the family, Connor has made a huge amount of money and now runs a successful private equity firm.  He can certainly spare the money.

But pride is a difficult thing to overcome, and there's also his sister Sarah to think about.  Tom knows that Sarah and her wife live in a tiny apartment with their two adopted kids, and battle to get by from pay check to pay check.

Perhaps key to Tom's reluctance though, is that he needs the loan to tide him over while he writes an autobiographical book, in which his sometimes tempestuous relationship with his siblings is a central feature.

Home Economics is a lightweight situation comedy series about three basically decent siblings who all want to do the right thing while achieving success, but who have drastically different ideas about what 'the right thing' and 'success' actually are.

Like a lot of sitcoms, the show relies on characters with exaggerated, archetypical traits; Sarah is the strident activist, Tom the overly cautious over-thinker, Conner the buffoonish but well-meaning man-child.  In the wrong hands, this could quickly get annoying, but a likeable and well-chosen cast makes all three characters work well.  Plus of course, they have their siblings and each other to point out their more egregious foibles.

Overall the show's comedy works well, as it maintains a light and breezy overall ambience and gives each sibling an opportunity to be on different sides of a situation.  It is not always the same sibling as the voice of reason, or the instigator, and so on.  The humour can veer a little bit into 'cringe comedy' at times, but it does not generally last too long, and the scripts tend to focus more on slapstick and banter.

This first season runs a slender seven episodes, and in addition to the usual episode by episode sitcom shenanigans it delivers a reasonably complete story about the three siblings and them re-establishing their familial relationships.  You could sit down and watch this season in an afternoon, then walk away feeling like you've seen a somewhat oddly structured comedy film with a satisfying conclusion.

I enjoyed this season of Home Economics, and I appreciated that it included a longer story arc rather than just "the wacky situation of the week".  I have to say though that I am not sure how well the formula stretch as an ongoing series, especially as there are 22 episodes in season two.  The premise might get a bit thin.

Dinoshark (2010)

 

Pliosaurs were ancient marine predators that grew to lengths of up to 15 metres (50 ft).  They went extinct around 100 million years ago.

But in this movie, one example of the species was cryogenically frozen in the arctic ice.  When global warming melts the glacier in which it was frozen, the creature revives.  A few years later, the now fully grown  predator arrives off the Mexico cost, where it soon proves itself absurdly fond of attacking and eating any human it encounters.

Local bad boy Trace McGraw is the first one to survive an encounter with the beast, but given his history with the local authorities, he has a great deal of trouble convincing them to listen.  Can he find a way to stop the Dinoshark before it kills again?  Or at least, before the movie ends?

This low-budget monster movie is produced by industry veteran Roger Corman.  Corman's followed the same basic "make it as cheap as possible, as fast as possible" approach to film since 1954, and there's little sign here that the leopard has changed its spots.  The movie smacks of high budget conscious decision-making on several levels.

The CGI, for instance, is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a no-budget project.  The basic design of the dinoshark itself doesn't look too bad, probably because it's not that hard to stick an allosaurus head stuck on a shark's body, but as soon as you see the creature move, it's very obviously not real and doesn't look remotely convincing. The film's (regrettably few) old-school practical effects look a lot better.

Probably the most Corman-tastic section in the film is a party scene where the band are playing too loud.  This allows blatant padding to the film's run time by forcing characters to repeat themselves; a minute or so is even devoted to having one of the characters ask the band to reduce the volume so they can hear each other. 

There's also a fair bit of padding in the profusion of scenes where some random people turn up on screen for the first time in the movie and then promptly get eaten. Sure, these films have been doing that ever since the days of Jaws, but not quite so often or so like clockwork. This is very much "no-one got chomped in the last 10 minutes? Better throw someone to the shark" territory.

Speaking the granddaddy of killer shark films, there are several unsubtle  and not terribly funny Jaws references in the score and dialogue, with the most blatant being "you're going to need a bigger chopper".  Few of these really land as anything more than a gratuitous film nerd reference, though.

Ultimately, one to skip unless you're desperate to see dependable TV actor Eric Balfour slumming it in a second rate creature feature.

My favourite part of the film?  The line of dialogue where someone talks about the dinoshark being sighted in New Zealand, and then shows a map depicting Papua New Guinea, which is some 5,000 km (3,000 miles) from the land of the long white cloud.